Feeling the Freedom

I have sent out some of the birth announcement to a few close friends and even received as a gift yesterday, a cute stuffed horse carrying a balloon that read “It’s a Girl”. How fun!

People seem to like the name - Beyond Horse Personalities. Second born children always have to wear the hand me downs don’t they? I liked the open ended feeling of it because we really have no idea where this will take us. We have only just opened the door to the kind of relationship we can have with horses. This blog I hope will journal the process of a new way of BEING with horses.

Some of us are tired of the old ways. The natural horse training techniques that has swept the horse world in the past 30 years; we find it just gives us new ways of controlling horses more intimately, although granted less violently than the old training techniques. They sell the 10 DVD packages that promise you the same results as the master for $400 or more, all within 10 to 20 years of your life. For most of us we got to level 2 or maybe 3 if we really worked hard and took a lot of clinics by the master. By this point most of our horses really hated the program and us, or they had died by then of boredom, old age or stress trying to figure out all the answers to these equations.

We have all seen the videos on U-tube of horses galloping around at liberty, bridle less, with amazing stops and spins and everyone so in awe, but most in the audience not aware that the horse is trained within an inch of his life. I am thinking the horse has long since quit feeling he had a free thought of his own that he could act upon. Personally I wasn’t feeling the liberty.

Ok, got off on a tangent there. I will try in future to put up a red flag when I feel a rant about to burst forth. Now here is a nice little difference between the blog and writing another book. This little rant would have most likely got nixed by the editor. Wow! What freedom – I can feel the liberty in this. Oh can I just add one more little tiny one. Isn’t it funny how some of the old school trainers are just now discovering natural horsemanship and think it is the newest bestest thing? Just an observation which is what I do.

I agree that the master of these programs has a gift that he/she (almost always he I’ve noticed) brings to horses or they bring to him, but when they try to put that into a package and program all that FEEL is lost. Feel can not be taught but I do believe it can be learned. And the horses are anxious to teach us.

To learn feel all we need to do is show up with our horse and listen…really listen. If they turn away with their body or head it means no. It could be ‘no’ for what you are doing or even what you are saying (oh yah they are listening on so many levels we never imagined). The yes is usually a direct look or a lick and chew. If what you are thinking or saying is really deeply important you might hit the jackpot and get the big eye rolling yawn. Once we start to understand the basis of their language, we can start to really relate to them and the result might be ‘feel’. Hands and legs…. pulling and kicking will become so far back in the distant past. Maybe all training might be in the distant past. We have no idea where this is taking us, we are just open and anxious to get on the road. No limitation and boxes for you, second child, you are free to go play.